Now you did start this company over 12 years ago. I believe it was over lunch with your co-founder Mel that you began chatting about this moment right here. We've seen such a streak of IPOs lately in the success of them. Were you just trying to strike while the iron's hot right now?

Well, we've been planning it for quite a while. The core driver for us on the IPO front is, you know, we have if you look at the balance sheet, we have 250 million 215 million in cash, no debt. So we don't need the money, but what we couldn't do, we couldn't compete with the Googles and the Amazons of the world on AI and tech talent, which is quarter our, you know, it is what we're built on. So, um we needed to take fake money and turn it into real money for the team.

Now, you say that you've been doing AI for a long time. It feels like that's all we've been talking about lately, though. What has this recent momentum, especially with all those other companies, now, Amazon, Google, all really touting about it. What has been the momentum lately for you since you've already been doing it, it seems.

Yeah, I think that's been, um, you know, in the machine learning, you know, natural language processing world, the the folks have been doing that for years, like like our team. I mean, we have we had patents that were AI patents before AI, anyone ever even talked about it. And so, um, it has been fun. Um, it's really the transformer model that has changed the game and and it is game-changing for e-commerce. If you think about it, it's very content-centric, text-based, you know, content.

Um, and the impact that you can have in a, you know, in a consumer journey world with good content or slightly better than content than a competitor because what we do for brands is we help brands grow across marketplaces around the world using a technology and AI stack that has, you know, we've we've invested 142 million in it. We have 400 people working on that. And, uh, but it's a global problem to solve.

I do quickly want to hit on that because when you think about consumer behavior, what we saw especially in the August retail sales was non-store or so e-commerce platforms see a growth of about 10% in the month of August alone. But consumer behavior seems very hard to navigate right now, especially with all the noise of sponsorships. You also have this algorithm that brands are trying to beat. So how do you guys play a role in that?

Well, the core of of the technology stack, the way we calculate revenue is just a formula, right? So revenue for a brand is traffic, eyeballs to a product or listing, conversion, can you convert it? At what price and is the product available close enough to the consumer? And then you want to be in a place where where, um, you're chosen. You know, consumers have a lot of choice today and and we want our brand's products to be to be uh first on their list.

Now, one of the platforms's initiatives as well is really accelerating brands on a global platform. You guys are a global company, specifically within the China marketplace. How exactly are you navigating the current landscape that we're seeing right now with your clients?

Well, I mean, uh, they've been so so so far we've had a great success in China. We have a, you know, about 200 people there. Um we continue to build the platform and and and uh for us, they've been um, very friendly, great relationships, and we've been very successful there.

With the de minimis policy ending, has that impacted any of your clients and how are you navigating that?

It it hasn't impacted us much. Um you know, that's more importing, you know, when we take goods from a brand, generally, it's in it's millions of dollars, not, you know, smaller, smaller amounts. So so we we haven't really had an impact with the de minimis.

I do want to take a step back because consumer behavior right now seems really hard to navigate. people that I've spoken to like a PWC expert, Ally Furman says the consumer really has to be convinced to buy right now. They're really seeking out value. How are you working with your clients to find the right price point that will really succeed in getting clients to buy the merchandise?

Well, you know, for us, it's just all mathematical. So we don't know exactly how to drive home the great branding. I mean, that's what our brands do and and they do they build great products. But if you have a great product, you will have mathematical propenscy to win in in a marketplace. And and that's what we do. So we actually the the formula works much better with a great product that really resonates with the consumer because you have a much higher mathematical propensity to to win over a consumer.

Yeah. Really quickly, in the next five years, what are you looking forward to most? Especially with this run-up of AI and this momentum that we're just gaining now.

Oh, we have a couple of things on our on our on our list. One of them is uh this sort of just fun to talk about. It's a good rallying cry is we have uh um, in Utah, there hasn't been a Fortune 500 company in like 30 plus years, I believe is the number. You know, and of course Idaho has Idaho has a couple and you know, Arizona has like eight and Texas, you know, so so we're wondering we want to put Utah on that list and and I think we're, you know, I think we're on path to do it. So that's a fun rallying cry for the next few years.